We are living in difficult times for people to find out who they are, so much pressure and judgment from others, it's easy to become demoralized and create a new identity just to impress people. It may be easy to blame the constant barrage of algorithms for melting people's brains, and to an extent that may be true, but what if in some cases it actually can give people a map back.

Last week on my instagram reel I got pulled into a chess video vortex with a mix of comedic videos, tips, etc. It made me more into it, so before I knew it I was signing up to play some games online. Obviously this type of see something > get more into it can be powerful, for good or bad reasons.

The thing is, I liked chess a bit before, so the reason I got pulled into the vortex was watching the videos and reinforcing my already existing taste. Now I'm probably not a big enough fan to avoid falling off playing in a month, but what if I was some guy that played tournaments when he was 12 or was chess club president, then got distracted as an adult by his jerb and eventually divorce and forgets all about it... then one day the algorithm starts showing him chess videos and he watches them an then it shows him more, and he gets into it and starts playing again. The algorithm could actually end up changing his life and help him rediscover lost part of his identity. Maybe he ends up playing locally and meets new friends and meets his second wife there. Of course this is a positive example of algorithm effect and you could as easily come up with a bad one, but overall I like the idea of reinforcing your tastes or helping you discover things you like that you forgot about pursuing.

I understand that it's like they looked around the world and tried to find the closest thing to an oppressed oppressor looking country to try to convince people of that framework, but does explain why they have to go this HAM on Free Palestine for decades? Isn't there some other civil wars or land disputes etc. in the world that could be portrayed as "this people is oppressed and need revolution" that they're so into. I mean they could even find some situations where the bottom revolutionary side is actual left wingers instead of far right Muslims.

And do they really think that Palestine taking over Israel would lead to communist revolution in the West? Like it's supposed to kick off revolutionary fervor that spreads halfway across the world? Feels like too many dominos to connect. The race communism plan was way better, call America racist and blame capitalism for it until people agree to get rid of capitalism to get rid of racism. A much more direct route to communism for them. And they seem to have abandoned that and pivoted into this Islamocommunist strategy that is a sinking boat for them

Right now possible 2028 field is all men Vance, Rubio, DeSantis, Youngkin, maybe Massie protest run, etc.

Is there any females who can become the Michelle Bachmann of the race and hang in the debates for a bit. Or try to elevate their name for a future run and pass Haley as the #1 female?

I grew up in a national park in Canada where most people are liberals, in the 2000s most of us hated Bush for invading Iraq and the Republicans for being gay haters, and supported Obama getting elected, and American politics was always more entertaining than Canadian. But my interests in 2000s are more things like movies, sports, video games etc. I developed libertarian views around 2010 range but it was all about believing it was more logical economically, the don’t tread on me stuff didn’t seem as relevant back then. I never dove head in to stuff like Occupy Wall St, early BLM or Gamergate, it was all events other people argued about for the most part. I have always liked taking the contrarian position and enjoyed arguments online. In the past sometimes people would get triggered if I eg. had an unconventional opinion about the best NBA draft prospects that year or something.

In 2016 I wanted Hillary to win, I wasn’t mega passionate about it, but I thought it would be cool to be first female president and Trump side was really anti immigrant and overall it was hard to understand why he was so popular.

For most of Trump’s 1st term like Russiagate type stuff, it was also a thing other people argued about more than me. On twitter I followed accounts like basketball more than politics. When MeToo hit it was a big thing on social media and I noticed this “online mob” type of energy looking for people to cancel. Since I find arguing entertaining I pushed back sometimes on celebrities people might have gone too far cancelling. Likewise when JK Rowling first started making anti trans stuff I tried to defend her right to that view sometimes. It would bother me if got banned from some forums for politely giving conservative views, or unfriended by some people on facebook.

Overall, I struggled more and more with the way people talked about politics online such as on my twitter feed. It wasn’t just that I disagreed with it, but I found it more and more group-y and boring to see peoples views blur together so much. Around mid 2020 in the BLM cases I took some contrarian view or tried to see what the defense would be, and I got nothing by attacks by people for it. I think it was kind of the straw that broke the camels back. So one day I decided to try starting a conservative politics account. And what I found is the people I followed just stood out as individuals more to me and just had more of an attitude and energy that was more attractive to me. With how much leftism was pushed in 2020 the people on the right wing side was the push back side and it was fun to see people flame the libs, you got to follow some hot right wing female accounts, etc. Once on the right wing side, the media from left wing side seemed more and more propagandistic, so many misleading headlines, cut clips at the perfect time to look worse, etc., There were right wing accounts talking about Obamagate and how it seemed like the Democrats spied on Trump, the Russiagate narrative flipped where it now looked like a hack job by the Democrats to try to get rid of Trump, not only making him look like the good guy but damning the Democrats.

Where I bought things too much was after the 2020 election. I bought into the it was all a plan by Trump people or Q-lite type of view that it was going to overturn it, some talented grifters got us and told us what we want to hear. So after the embarrassment that I was wrong and Trump didn’t overturn it, why didn’t this make me rethink my right wing position? Because it only discredited the people that pushed that, but the ones who had been saying in Nov/Dec eg. “It’s not going to be overturned, if we lose in the Supreme Court it’s over” it actually made me MORE confident in their views being rational going forward that they were willing to tell followers what they didn't want to hear. Over time, I feel I have been able to "trim" the accounts I listen to using a process like this turning on them if they end up grifting.

I am still on right wing social media side to this day, but my take on Trump is more lukewarm positive and I feel stronger about the Democrat being bad than Republicans being perfect. As for right wing social media, honestly it was more fun before Elon bought it and when they were on the bottom, I think the initial MAGA energy has died down and people are more split over things like Israel, there is more algorithm driven slop, the far left went to BlueSky and far right to Truth. A few years ago I got more into “election twitter” type of right wingers which I often find more interesting than the pure MAGA ones these days. Or it's fun to listen to the MAGA guy talk about non political subjects like movies. There is also some personal reasons I am less energetic or responsive to it. In general I am happy with my decision to go to the right wing side, but I think overall the best years for that are in the past.

Sometimes it feels like young people think this event stopped the world like covid. Like I saw a tweet thread after the latest Kyle Gordon parody video about music in 2010 and someone was wondering why during the great recession people were making songs about partying and sex. For me honestly it just didn't affect my life that much, I guess it was timing was in college at the time and not this recently graduated person trying to get hired by a finance company or someone trying to buy a house or something. I did not feel the culture was that emotionally depressed over the recession, it was in fact a pretty solid time vibes wise.

Neither make you think it’s the biggest one just by the name like Wrestlemania and Wrestle Kingdom. I think Slammiversary would have been a good number one name for TNA but it is their #2. AEW all the gambling ones don‘t feel right for this, Wrestledream got introduced too late, so maybe Revolution would have been decent pick.

I am curious what feels like ubiquitous, everyone knows the words, etc. songs to you from a time period before your birth.

(reposted due to typo)

Earlier this year posted about listening to chapter a day podcast after listening to the second half of Chronicles II, Ezra, Nemeth and Esther in the Old Testament.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Discussion/comments/1sgxar9/some_random_thoughts_on_listening_to_chapter_a/

I was excited to get to the Book of Job next as I’d heard of it after the Coens Brother movie A Serious Man and it has Satan in it. Basically Satan tells God that the reason his most perfect follower likes him so much is he makes his life great in return, so he says let’s test if he still has faith in you after fucking him up. So God kills his family and takes away his possessions and the follower is still believing in god’s plan, but then Satan says try messing up his physical health too, so God gives him brutal debilitating boils, and then Job finally snaps and starts questioning god. Most of the book is Job arguing with his friends who are not really listening that well and saying that you must have did something wrong to piss off God so much, before Job and God argue at the end and he is restored.

Despite that interesting premise, tbh I found it a bit more boring to get through than I expected. The God/Satan stuff is only a few chapters and then it’s mostly Job arguing with his friends for an eternity, and I think I got the point in half as many. Still, Job is a highly relatable character and story especially for those of us who feel they’ve been through hard times and have kicked around by the universe and I can understand why it has resonated with people for millennia. It is something that has stuck with me.

Now after the Book of Job, the next was Psalms and Proverbs that was less narratives than individual passages or sayings. I suspect Psalms might work in some settings like a church but I had trouble getting through it in this setting. So as my project originally dropped me in the middle of the Old Testament in Chronicles 2, I decided to go back to the start and do Genesis instead.

In Genesis I expected the famous god making the earth, the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, etc. part. That’s all in there, but only in about the first one fifth of it. The bulk of is Genesis as in showing how the jews settled in Israel through multi generation narrative of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, all given a decent amount of time but for a lifetime, not a ton of it. The theme of tension (or later reconciliation) between brothers seems to run through this such as a guy disguising himself as his brother to steal his blind father’s blessing, or brothers selling one to slavery, etc. As a totally random observation I was surprised Rachel is this biblical a name when it seems so modern girl 1900s coded after Friends, same with Rebecca. There is some weird parts like the Sodom and Gomorrah chapter where god kills the degenerate town where when guests show up they want to rape them (partly for being gay, partly for poor hospitality?) then the daughters of one of the spared guys scheme to sleep with their father while drunk to get pregnant for some reason. Or at one point god kills a guy for pulling out of his dead brother’s wife.

Overall, the book of Genesis is a bit weird, but it is certainly interesting and unique narrative, with the four generations there is a lot going on here that I can see it being interesting to study for scholars.

Not jumping off the bridge cause everyone else was a good instinct, but now this has other negative impact on you losing touch

Hi, I’m actor Tom Holland, you may best know me for playing Robin in Batman vs Superman and Justice League and Boq in the Wicked films. I will tell you my life story.

I grew up loving acting and being on stage and my first big break was Billy Elliott the musical, then my 2nd big break was starring with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor in tsunami disaster film The Impossible. After I got acclaim for this, I got to work with Ron Howard and Chris Hemsworth in their film In the Heart of the Sea.

Then, I got my big break. My agent told me about the upcoming Zack Snyder Batman vs Superman looking for a Robin and they’re interested in me! I killed it in the auditions and got the job! The crazy part is, a few months later I heard Marvel wanted a new Spiderman and I think I could have beat Charlie Rowe for the role, but I was already under contract and excited to work with Zack, Henry, Ben, and Jesse. Another movie I wish I could have been in is the Greatest Showman in Zac Efron’s role but I was too busy filming Justice League. Wait, Zendaya was in that one too wasn’t she, I guess I just missed her twice. To be honest, I saw her at a party after she got engaged to Charlie and she was one of the most beautiful people I've seen in person, I’m not sure I’d have been able to concentrate while acting with her.

Anyway, so Batman vs Superman was a success, it had more mixed reviews than I expected, however my role and chemistry with Batman was one of the most liked parts of it. I returned for Justice League and I really feels like this one got done badly in the editing room and Zack was forced into some decisions he didn’t want. 

After that, I had some trouble getting offers and shaking Robin, honestly. I almost got the part of Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story but finished 2nd, unfortunately Ron Howard joined late and was not part of casting. They talked about another movie with me and Ben for years, but after heir last experience making a Batman and Robin movie it just never happened. So I decided to return to the stage for a few years, and ended up getting my first Tony nomination. I also played Robin again in The Flash in 2023. I've been around in movie, tv and voice roles, but recently my biggest role has been Boq in the Wicked films. Honestly I auditioned for Fiyero, but it worked out for me perfectly as I ended up dating my co-star and scene partner Marissa Bade and am now thinking about popping the question. I had my eye on playing Flynn in live action Tangled and auditioned multiple times, but they decided to go with unknowns.

At still only 30 years old and after getting some exposure in the Wicked series, I’m feeling optimistic about shedding Robin and resetting my career. I don’t think I will return to superheroes again, but who knows where things can go.

People: THE YOUNGER GENERATION

Nov 4, 1951

Is it possible to paint a portrait of an entire generation?

Each generation has a million faces and a million voices.

What the voices say is not necessarily what the generation believes, and what it believes is not necessarily what it will act on. Its motives and desires are often hidden. It is a medley of good and evil, promise and threat, hope and despair. Like a straggling army, it has no clear beginning or end. And yet each generation has some features that are more significant than others; each has a quality as distinctive as a man’s accent, each makes a statement to the future, each leaves behind a picture of itself.

What of today’s youth? Some are smoking marijuana; some are dying in Korea. Some are going to college with their wives; some are making $400 a week in television. Some are sure they will be blown to bits by the atom bomb. Some pray. Some are raising the highest towers and running the fastest machines in the world. Some wear blue jeans; some wear Dior gowns. Some want to vote the straight Republican ticket. Some want to fly to the moon.

TIME’S correspondents across the U.S. have tried to find out about this younger generation-by talking to young people, and to their teachers and guardians. What do the young think, believe, and read? Who are their heroes? What are their ambitions? How do they see themselves and their time? These are some of the questions TIME’S correspondents asked; the masses of answers-plus the correspondents’ interpretation-contain many clashing shades of opinion, but nevertheless reveal a remarkably clear area of agreement on the state of the nation’s youth.

Youth today is waiting for the hand of fate to fall on its shoulders, meanwhile working fairly hard and saying almost nothing. The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum. By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today’s younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches or carry posters. It has been called the “Silent Generation.” But what does the silence mean? What, if anything, does it hide? Or are youth’s elders merely hard of hearing?

They Are Grave and Fatalistic

Listen to their voices, in a college bull session:

“I think the draft has all the fellows upset . . . They can’t start figuring in high school or even in college what they want to do … First thing you know, Uncle Sam has tagged them off base.”

“The boys are upset about the Korean business because they can’t tell from one day to the next what they are going to be doing, going into the Army or what.”

“Sure, the boys say, ‘What’s the use? I’d just get started and whammo, I’m gone.'”

“It’s hard to get married when you don’t know what the deal is. Maybe your husband is off to Korea or somewhere, and there you are.”

“With maybe a baby on the way.”

“It’s better to get a job and wait.”

“That’s the worst part.”

The “Korean business”-and a lot of other business that may How_is the dominant fact in the life of today’s youth. “I observe that you share the prevailing mood of the hour,” Yale’s President A. Whitney Griswold told his graduating class last June, “which in your case consists of bargains privately struck with fate-on fate’s terms.” The hand of fate has been on the U.S. with special gravity since World War I; it has disturbed the lives of America’s youth since the ‘305, through depression and war. The fear of depression has receded; the fear of war remains. Those who have been to war and face recall, and those who face the draft at the end of their schooling, know that they may have to fight before they are much older.

But youth is taking its upsetting uncertainties with extraordinary calm. When the U.S. began to realize how deeply it had committed itself in Korea, youngsters of draft age had a bad case of jitters; but all reports agree that they have since settled down to studying or working for as long as they can. The majority seem to think that war with Russia is inevitable sooner or later, but they feel that they will survive it. Reports TIME’S Los Angeles Bureau: “Today’s youth does have some fear of the atomic age. But he does not feel as though he is living on the brink of disaster, nor does he flick on the radio (as was done in the ‘405) and expect his life to be changed drastically by the news of the moment. There is a feeling that the world is in a ten-round bout, and that there will be no quick or easy knockout.”

Hardly anyone wants to go into the Army; there is little enthusiasm for the military life, no enthusiasm for war. Youngsters do not talk like heroes; they admit freely that they will try to stay out of the draft as long as they can. But there is none of the systematized and sentimentalized antiwar feeling of the ‘205. Pacifism has been almost nonexistent since World War II; so are Oxford Oaths. Some observers regard this as a sign of youth’s passivity. But, as a student at Harvard puts it: “When a fellow gets his draft notice in February and keeps on working and planning till June, instead of boozing up every night and having a succession of farewell parties, he has made a very difficult, positive decision. Most make that decision today.”

They Are Conventional and Gregarious

On a sunny Sunday not long ago, Sociology Professor Carr B. Lavell of George Washington University took one of his students on a fishing trip. He is a brilliant student, president of his class, a big man on campus, evidently with a bright future in his chosen field, medicine. In the bracing air, professor and student had a quiet talk. Why had he gone into medicine? asked the professor. Answer: medicine looked lucrative. What did he want to do as a doctor? Get into the specialty that offered biggest fees. Did he think that a doctor owed some special service to the community? Probably not. “I am just like anyone else,” said the student. “I just want to prepare myself so that I can get the most out of it for me. I hope to make a lot of money in a hurry. I’d like to retire in about ten years and do the things I really want to do.” And what are those? “Oh,” said the brilliant student, “fishing, traveling, taking it easy.”

Then they stopped talking, because the student had a nibble.

Perhaps more than any of its predecessors, this generation wants a good; secure job. This does not mean that it specifically fears a depression, as some aging New Dealers claim. The feeling is widespread that anyone who wants to work can find a decent job; the facts confirm that feeling (and the starting pay is better ‘than ever). But youth’s ambitions have shrunk. Few youngsters today want to mine diamonds in South Africa, ranch in Paraguay, climb Mount Everest, find a cure for cancer, sail around the world, or build an industrial empire. Some would like to own a small, independent business, but most want a good job with a big firm, and with it, a kind of suburban idyll.

An official of the placement bureau at Stanford University finds college graduates mostly interested in big companies-and choosy about which ones they will work for. “Half the time a guy will turn down a good job because he has to work in the city [meaning San Francisco]. They all figure there’s no future in being holed up in a little apartment in town for ten years or getting up at 6 in the morning to commute to work and then not getting home until after dark. So they all want to work down on the peninsula where they can have a little house in the country and play golf or tennis and live the good life.”

Says one youthful observer who still likes his dreams bigger: “This generation suffers from lack of worlds to conquer. Its fathers in a sense, did too well. Sure, there are slums left-but another Federal housing project can clean up the worst. Most of the fights in labor have simmered down to arguments around the bargaining table. Would-be heroes find themselves padded from har-and hope-like lunatics in a cell. In business, the tax structure, social security and pension plans promise to soften the blow of depression or personal misfortune-and forbid the building of new empires. In science there is the great corporation (or the Government) glad to furnish the expensive machinery now necessary for the smallest advance-and to give its name, or that of its group research boss, to the new process, while plowing back the profits. A man goes bounding, with no visible bruises, among the pads of an over-organized society.”

The facts are that the U.S. is a highly organized society, must be, and will get more rather than less organized; that the big corporation is here to stay (and is a progressive instrument of U.S. capitalism). What is discouraging to some observers is not so much that youth has accepted life within the well-padded structure of organized society and big corporations, but that it seems to have relatively little ambition to do any of society’s organizing. What is even more disturbing is youth’s certainty that Government will take care of it-a feeling which continues despite a good deal of political distrust of Government. Reports TIME’S Seattle Bureau: “The Pacific Northwest is only yesterday removed from the frontier, but the ‘root, hog, or die’ spirit has almost disappeared. Into its place has moved a curious dependence on the biggest new employer-Government. A 28-year-old aerodynamics specialist at Boeing says: ‘I hope to work toward an income of $500 or $600 a month, after taxes. You know, only on a sliding scale for inflation. I’d just like to net $600, and then my family would always be O.K. You start earning more than that, and it’s taxed away from you, so what the hell.'”

Says a 26-year-old promotion manager in Dallas: “Sure, I’d like to do something on my own, but I want to get well fixed first-make plenty of money and then maybe start some innovations.”

This cautious desire to be “well fixed” and a little more has many causes: the war; the lingering shock of the Big Depression (which this younger generation felt or heard about in its childhood); and the hard-to-kill belief (still expounded in some college economics courses) that the frontiers of the U.S. economy have been reached.

There is also the feeling that it is neither desirable nor practical to do things that are different from what the next fellow is doing. Said a girl in Minneapolis: “The individual is almost dead today, but the young people are unaware of it. They think of themselves as individuals, but really they are not. They are parts of groups. They are unhappy outside of a group. When they are alone, they are bored with themselves. There is a tendency now to date in foursomes, or sixsomes. Very few dates are just a boy & girl together. They have to be with a crowd. These kids in my group think of themselves as individuals, but actually it is as if you took a tube of toothpaste and squeezed out a number of little distinct blobs on a piece of paper. Each blob would be distinct-separated in space-but each blob would be the same.”

The Girls Want a Career-and Marriage

At the corner of Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street stands a 23-story building populated entirely by women, in which men are not permitted above the first floor. This does not mean that its inhabitants are not interested in men. The Barbizon hotel for women is considered a good, respectable address for out-of-town girls who have come to make a name for themselves in New York. In the small green lobby, through which moves a constant stream of eager young women carrying an air of determination, one aspiring young actress from Providence, R.I. said: “The men in New York are all the same. They’re out for what they can get. I have a boy friend from home who comes to see me about every three weeks. He’s a real home-town boy, all-American, clean-cut. He wouldn’t speak the same language as these New York men. They’re all trying to be big shots. I go out with them when he isn’t here, but since I’ve been in New York I haven’t met one man I can call a friend … I won’t marry until I’ve convinced myself that I’ve gotten everything I can out of acting. Back home, everybody’s a homebody, wants to raise big families. I’m not ready for that yet.

If I married this fellow from home, I know I’d have to quit acting right away. He just wouldn’t stand for it. I don’t think I could do both, anyway.”

American young women are, in many ways, the generation’s most serious problem: they are emotional D.P.s. The granddaughters of the suffragettes, the daughters of the cigarette-and-short-skirt crusaders, they were raised to believe in woman’s emancipation, and equality with man. Large numbers of them feel that a home and children alone would be a fate worse than death, and they invade the big cities in search of a career. They ride crowded subways on which men, enjoying equality, do not offer them seats. They compete with men in industry and the arts; and keep up with them, Martini for Martini, at the cocktail parties.

There is every evidence that women have not been made happy by their ascent to power. They are dressed to kill in femininity. The bosom is back; hair is longer again; office telephones echo with more cooing voices than St. Mark’s Square at pigeon-feeding time. The career girl is not ready to admit that all she wants is to get married; but she has generally retreated from the brassy advance post of complete flat-chested emancipation, to the position that she would like, if possible, to have marriage and a career, both. In the cities, she usually lives with a roommate (for respectability and lower rent) in a small apartment, fitted with chintz slipcovers, middlebrow poetry and a well-equipped kitchenette. Rare and fortunate is the bachelor who has not been invited to a “real, home-cooked dinner.” to be eaten off a shaky bridge table, by a young woman who during the daytime is a space buyer or a dentist’s assistant.

Says a Minneapolis priest: “The young American male is increasingly bewildered and confused by the aggressive, coarse, dominant attitudes and behavior of his women. I believe it is one of the most serious social traits of our time-and one that is certain to have most serious social consequences.”

Their Morals Are Confused

The shrieking blonde ripped the big tackle’s shirt from his shoulder and Charlestoned off through the crowded room, fan-dancing with a ragged sleeve. In her wake, shirts fell in shreds on the floor, until half the male guests roared around bare to the waist. Shouts and laughs rose above the full-volume records from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The party, celebrating the departure of a University of Texas coed who had flunked out, had begun in midafternoon some three hours earlier. In one corner, four tipsily serious coeds tried to revive a passed-out couple with more salty dog (a mixture of gin, grapefruit juice and salt). About 10 p.m., a brunette bounded on to the coffee table, in a limited striptease. At 2 a.m., when the party broke up, one carload of youngsters decided to take off on a two-day drive into Mexico (they got there all right, and sent back picture postcards to the folks).

The younger generation can still raise hell. The significant thing is not that it does, but how it goes about doing it. Most of today’s youngsters never seem to lose their heads; even when they let themselves go, an alarm clock seems to be ticking away at the back of their minds; it goes off sooner or later, and sends them back to school, to work, or to war. They are almost discreet about their indiscretions, largely because (unlike their parents) they no longer want or need to shock their elders. The generation has “won its latchkey.” It sees no point or fun in yelling for freedom to do as it pleases, because generally no one keeps it from doing as it pleases. It is not rebellious-either against convention or instruction, the state or fate, Pop or Mom. Toward its parents, it exhibits an indulgent tolerance. As one young New Yorker put it with a shrug: “Why insult the folks?”

The younger generation seems to drink less. “There is nothing glorious or inglorious any more about getting stewed.” says one college professor. Whether youth is more or less promiscuous than it used to be is a matter of disagreement. Fact is that it is less showy about sex. Whatever its immoralities, it commits them on the whole because it enjoys them, and not because it wants to demonstrate against Victorian conventions or shock Babbitt. In that sense, it is far less childish than its parents were. As a whole, it is more sober and conservative, but in individual cases, e.g., the recent dope scandals, it makes Flaming Youth look like amateurs.

The younger generation is tolerant of almost anything, shocked by little. Young men who may personally think sex experience before marriage wrong are perfectly tolerant toward anyone who disagrees. Gay blades report that young women, when they turn down what is still known as a “pass,” do so apologetically, as if they were exhibiting a social shortcoming like an inability to mambo. The girl’s usual excuse: “I am so sorry, it’s just the way I was brought up.”

A paratrooper at Fort Bragg told a TIME correspondent that he had nothing against premarital sex: “Before the property is yours, I don’t see why anybody can’t use it.” But a buddy added: “After marriage, some guy taking my wife would be like taking my car and putting on a few extra miles. It might improve through use, but I like to drive my own.” A student editor at Emory University states a widespread phenomenon among American women: “There are few who have any strong moral feelings against having affairs. They may be afraid. But if they kid themselves into falling madly in love, then it’s all right.”

Considering that its parents gave the younger generation few standards, few ideals, and an education increasingly specialized, i.e., without cultural breadth, youth’s morals have turned out far better than anyone had a right to hope. Almost of itself, it has picked up the right instincts from an American tradition older than its parents: it wants to marry, have children, found homes, and if necessary, defend them.

They Expect Disappointment

Intellectually, today’s young people already seem a bit stodgy. Their adventures of the mind are apt to be mild and safe, and their literature too often runs to querulous and self-protective introspection, or voices a pale, orthodox liberalism that seems more second-hand than second nature. On the whole, the young writer today is a better craftsman than the beginner of the ‘205. Novelists like Truman Capote, William Styron and Frederick Buechner are precocious technicians, but their books have the air of suspecting that life is long on treachery, short on rewards. What some critics took for healthy revolt in James Jones’s From Here to Eternity was really a massively reiterated gripe against life. But Jones is not the only young writer to wallow in a world of seemingly private resentments. Most of his fellow writers suffer from what has become their occupational disease: belief that disappointment is life’s only certainty. The young writers of the ‘205 were at least original enough to create personal styles. Today the young writer’s flair sometimes turns out to be nothing more than a byproduct of his neuroses.

Educators across the U.S. complain that young people seem to have no militant beliefs. They do not speak out for anything. Professors who used to enjoy baiting students by outrageously praising child labor or damning Shelley now find that they cannot get a rise out of the docile notetakers in their classes. The only two issues about which the younger generation seem to get worked up are race relations and world government; but neither of these issues rouses anything approaching an absorbing faith.

Many students and teachers blame this lack of conviction on fear-the fear of being tagged “subversive.” Today’s generation, either through fear, passivity or conviction, is ready to conform.

Marxism seems dead among the U.S. young; belief in democracy is strong but inarticulate. The one new movement that has begun in the younger generation is what Poet-Professor Peter Viereck calls the revolt against revolt-an attempt to give youth a conservative credo to stand up against the bankrupt but lingering political radicalism of the ‘203 and ‘305.

One of the most significant facts about the younger generation is that increasingly larger numbers of it are seeking their faith not in secular panaceas but in God.

They Want a Faith

Near the Mount Zion Methodist Church just outside Atlanta, on Highway 41, a onetime barbecue pit has been turned into a Bible classroom. One evening recently, eleven disciples watched Robert L. West go over and flip off the light switch. “It’s kinda dark in here without the lights,” apologized West, as he walked behind the crepe-wrapped white cross now lighted up by two candles, “but I would ask you to look upon this symbol-perhaps the greatest in the world.”

West, an 18-year-old son of a paper-plant foreman, who quit Georgia Tech because he found nothing but “hard, cold facts of engineering,” looked like a church -ly Frank Sinatra, in his Paisley bow tie and purple jacket, his big ears enlarged in shadows on the blackboard behind him. He read his long text (Luke 9: 20-27: “. . . And be rejected of the elders . . .”), and in a businesslike manner proceeded to expound it-the job of youth today. “Unless we, the young people of today, go to work, we’re going to lose in the end. This symbol has stood for thousands of years. To us today it stands for sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice that He made for us … And it stands for a call, a call to work

. . But we’re afraid to take on something if we have to call on God to do it. We’re ready to do anything if we can handle it with our own two hands. But we’re afraid to try something too big, a job that takes God’s help . . . This place should be filled … As we stand in front of this cross, lift up our shamed hearts to the work that is ours . . .”

The younger generation is looking for a faith. The fact that it has not found one -that it isn’t even sure where to look;is less significant than the fact that it feels the need to believe.

The generation of the ‘205 was devoutly iconoclastic. It put on (in the words of T. S. Eliot) “the black cap of jem’en joutisme”-of I-don’t-give-a-damn-ism. It discovered with a mixture of horror and delight that it was living in a brand-new age, the 20th Century, and it decided to burn all the old cultural furniture. This huge fire, while it caused incalculable damage, cast a sharp, new light across U.S. civilization-and encouraged the younger generation of that day to do a whooping war dance around it. Gertrude Stein christened it the “lost generation,” but she may have spoken too soon.

To some, it seems that today’s youth is really the lost generation. It does not believe that the wrecking of the ‘205 made sense, and even if it did, the ‘205 did not leave many values to wreck. Present-day youth has no living heroes and few villains. Said a professor of sociology: “We spend all our time debunking. We have no heroes, so how can you expect the young people to have any? We destroy them all. We’ve even done it in the sports world. Kids today feel they have to go all the way back to Babe Ruth to find a hero. Today the only heroes are the ones whom they can’t destroy. And who are those? The heroes of the comic strips.”

There is no formal religious revival among the young. God, for most young Americans, is still a vaguely comforting thought, theology a waste of time, and denominations beside the point. To large numbers of them, religion is still merely an ethical code. But God (whoever or whatever they understand by that word) has once more become a factor in the younger generation’s thoughts. The old argument of religion v. science is subsiding; a system which does not make room for both makes little sense to today’s younger generation. It is no longer shockingly unfashionable to discuss God.

Church attendance among the young has increased, partly because churches have made strong efforts to win new followers through social and sport activities. But there is an unquestioned spiritual need at work, too. Says Dean Robert Strozier of the University of Chicago: “They all have a conscience.” Says Historian Viereck: “They believe they believe ; they do not necessarily believe. Not many of today’s young people say they have seen God, but they think everybody needs to see God.”

They Will Serve

Beside a Quonset hut at Kimpo Airport, more than 100 tired, unshaven infantrymen lolled in the dust, waiting patiently for planes that would take them to Tokyo. For some, Tokyo meant the first leg of the trip home. For others it meant only a temporary break in the dirty business of war. They had no yarns to swap, no desire to learn any more than they already knew about war. From a few groups came the click of dice, and the only voices audible over the distant roar of engines were the urgent pleas of crapshooters. At one group, a Red Cross worker paused to chat with a sergeant who had spent 13 months in Korea. Said the sergeant: “For 15 months the guys have been running up and down these mountains getting their fannies full of lead. And what have we proved? I got news for you, Mister; the next time this boy fights to defend anybody’s country, it’ll damn well be his own.” But an officer said: “You seen Seoul? We11.. I’d hate for that to be Decatur, Illinois.”

The soldier in the combat zone is too preoccupied to do much thinking about the underlying reasons for his presence in Korea. He is concerned almost exclusively with personal problems, and the personal problem that overshadows all others is the problem of getting home. To justify his personal yearning to go home, he often subscribes to the thesis that Korea was a mistake (once back in the States, he will probably change his mind). In Korea, he does his job-because of his sense of duty to his country and his buddies, and because of his pride in his country and himself.

G.I. Joe’s younger brother is better informed and educated, much better trained, and less sorry for himself. Mauldin cartoons today would not find the popularity they did in World War II. The AWOL rate is down, even the use of profanity has fallen off (at least in Stateside camps). “Little Joe” gripes about his officers, distrusts politics and government (it is universally believed that “Harry Vaughan can transfer any man”). He does not go in for heroics, or believe in them. He is short on ideals, lacks self-reliance, is for personal security at any price. He singularly lacks flame. In spite of this, he makes a good, efficient soldier-relying on superior firepower.

The best thing that can be said for American youth, in or out of uniform, is that it has learned that it must try to make the best oj: a bad and difficult job, whether that job is life, war, or both. The generation which has been called the oldest young generation in the world has achieved a certain maturity.

Young people do not feel cheated. And they do not blame anyone. Before this generation, “they” were always to blame. It was a standard prewar feeling that “they” had let them down. But this generation puts the blame on life as a whole, not on parents, politicians, cartels, etc. The fact of this world is war, uncertainty, the need for work, courage, sacrifice. Nobody likes that fact. But youth does not blame that fact on its parents dropping the ball. In real life, youth seems to know, people always drop the ball. Youth today has little cynicism, because it never hoped for much.

Says a TIME correspondent in Boston: “Young people most bitterly know the frightful cost of living to keep peace in the world, and they willingly submit to the cost, not from want of spirit, but from a knowledge that it is the best thing to do. You cannot say of them, ‘Youth Will Be Served,’ because the phrase suggests a voracious striking out from security, wealth and stability. The best you can say for this younger generation is, ‘Youth Will Serve.'”

For fun I will say just about everyone is in

South Carolina - Kamala Harris

Kamala may end up trying to get in progressives good graces and go a bit left of moderate voters here, but her name recognition with black voters will be perfect and they may not know white moderates like Shapiro and Ossoff that well even if their views fit. The other candidates won’t waste too much of their money challenging the favorite here while she will look to get as big a win as possible.

Nevada - Gavin Newsom

I see Nevada having working class economic voters who too busy paying the bills to be as plugged into the daily politics and culture war, therefore name recognition wins here with Newsom as recognizable governor of nearby state, less black voters helps him hold off Harris and he will put his resources into winning this.

New Hampshire - Pete Buttigieg

If Talarico runs I would consider him to take it and become a serious threat, but for now I will say who Buttigieg almost won New Hampshire in 2020, that type of northeast college educated voter seems to be perfect for his appeal, and he will put all his chips in here.

New Mexico - Gavin Newsom

Largely the same reasons as Nevada.

Michigan - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Michigan has shown strength with progressives and the establishment vote would be all over the place if Whitmer is in, but even without her Newsom and Harris seem fairly even here along with other candidates which could be enough to fall behind a progressive.

Virginia - Jon Ossoff

This potentially could be Ossoff’s Biden-South Carolina as even if losing the first five states, he could erase it with the last win before Super Tuesday and Virginia a good fit to respond to what I predict his lane to be, which is the most go Republicans legally after they leave office guy. He will know this and invest his resources here.

Imo things not being equal is a natural part of the world. There are bigger animals that eat the smaller ones. There are stronger and faster people physically. There are smarter and dumber people, there are harder and lazier working people. Without differences in people Isaac Newton, Galileo and Aristotle would not exist.

This is part of why capitalism is a lightning rod as it asks you how ok you are with big outcome differences.

Why is it a return to the garden to make everyone equal? What if this is in fact trying to swim upstream from how things are meant to be?

Group A - people you find beautiful but you are fully aware it's in objective way, there is nothing else between you giving you feelings/crush/connection, it's just what they look like is your type.

Group B - has something extra in terms of the connection or interaction that makes them a more obvious crush and romantic interest

As a result even in cases where group B person is around 7/10 looking if you polled most people and group A is 9/10, you have stronger feelings for group B person and if given the choice would still rather go on a date with them. Not because the 9/10 is out of your league and you are being strategic to settle for just a still good looking 7/10, but you are actually more interested in the latter period. It becomes a no brainer to not have romantic aspirations for Group A overall between that and the fact that I thought there was nothing between us, also basically guarantees they're not into me like that either.

This was response to the "why do men who have their shit together struggle more with dating than ones who need to be fixed" thread yesterday but I was a day late so I thought I would repost it

Take a modern man who thinks he did everything right, he got the degree from college, he has an urban professional job, he has the same political views as everyone at college and young hip people where he works, he watches the cool buzzy show, he is hoping to get promotion and buy house. But all of this partly happened because his philosophy is kind of designate thinking over to the group an to assume the "experts" telling him how to live a normal life. This taught him to search for some kind of new age American Dream type life, move up in the world career wise, get promoted, buy a house, get married, etc. Sure finding the girl is part of that, but it's just one piece.

So as a result, what has been his relationship with women? As he believes in this group normal philosophy and there are a lot of bros around, he did what most guys did in their early 20s which was to try to have as much sex as possible. He saw himself as strategic by going after the 6s instead of the 8s and 9s and tried to work his way up. Later on in his 30s, he started to think he should find a stable person to try to have kids with, so looked for long term relationship and hit the apps, and after that was frustrating at 38 just got back from a solo trip to Thailand.

What went wrong here? His entire ethos of designating thinking to the group instead of actually having your OWN instincts played against him in dating. Racists and homophobes ride with their own instincts and have no filter, by being a modern enlightened man he is able to override them and trust the collective wisdom, but in this case he needed to use instincts more. He didn't date the slightly above average person at work because he had a connection with her and chemistry leading to a crush, he was actually more attracted to the conventionally hottest chick at work and after hitting on her didn't go anywhere, tried to "logically" settle for one of the only moderately decent looking ones. As a result his pick had nothing to do with whether he and the mid looking one were a good fit at all and it was starting in an uninspiring place relationship wise, maybe he actually had better natural chemistry with the other mid decent looking woman, but ended up dating the wrong one. His relationship with women has been objectifying and sex driven his whole adult life, because he saw other bros doing it. This dude may have a job and be "nice" on dates, but women instincts saying meh is not necessarily wrong.

Meanwhile I have a coworker at grocery store who was addicted to meth a few years ago and since i added him on instagram he seems to be a white rapper, and is in long term relationship with 8/10 looking girl. That may seem crazy and her parents would be justified to say can I introduce to my friend's doctor son but idk... maybe he is actually more interested in a real relationship than the type of guy described above? Maybe he is more capable of Sparks when he met her? Along with the I can fix you thing. I don't think this girl is dumber than the above good job guy's next girlfriend. Maybe they're both worse off than the girl that gets a guy with both a good job and super appealing to her but there's only so many of those around.

While for fun overall, the current president has clearly benefitted from taking to memes/gifs like a fish in water and perhaps it replaces in functionality what we previously thought as charisma.

1 Kamala Harris

She has already been memed plenty, but we should be wary of mixing up how strong she really is in this area from the immense effort spent last year trying to make her popular on social media. But I think even after that, Kamala may be #1 anyway. She has a unique look and expressive face and quirks to make comedy out of on the internet. She fills a greater demand for female politician memes since most are boring and she fits into LGBT and minority driven side of the internet looking for sassy yas kween type gifs

2 Gretchen Whitmer

I originally had her 3rd but I bumped her up because as with Kamala, there is a bigger shortage for female politician memes. Whitmer has memorable look and expressive face and has toyed with memorable imagery like feeding the Doritos. My biggest reservation is if Whitmer’s aesthetic leans a bit more female bad guy president/villainous witch in Disney movie/etc. and how that effects her meme potential.

3 J.B. Pritzker

Pritzker is another candidate not famous enough to have reached his real meme potential yet,, but is a sleeping giant in the area with long history of rotund guys in comedy, and I also like the honorary Italian look. He is the closest thing aesthetic wise on this list to Trump with the size and bruiser businessman look. He has a "friendlier" vibe than someone like Newsom.

4 Gavin Newsom

Some people would rate Newsom higher as he has the charisma and unique look and can pull out a reaction meme at any time, but he has bigger version of my reservation with Whitmer where people don't find him likeable enough to use in friendly meme way. He’s also been exposed enough that it could have taken off more already than it has. Still, I wouldn't count him out.

5 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

For how much AOC has been at the forefront of progressivism and her expressiveness, I feel like she never totally got there in this area. Maybe it’s because they like her too much, or she’s too good looking? Either way, I’m not going to call her a total slouch here, but I won’t go over the moon rating her in this area either.

6 Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg has a memorable and wholesome face that could have potential, but making fun of LGBT guy feels a bit dicey to some corners of the internet and like AOC he’s had opportunities to blow up here already. We'll say he is around middle of the list.

7 Wes Moore

The list is starting to fall off hard as Moore seemed like a candidate to rank last here, but maybe after a long race he ends up with some reaction gifs black social media users like.

8 Mark Kelly

Kelly’s got the unique bald look and even though he seems like the least funny person here, that could inadvertently make it a little more fun to use him than you expected.

9 Andy Beshear

Beshear is like a version of Buttigieg where he has the innocent white boy look that could be used, but it may be slightly too religious conservative coded.

10 Ro Khanna

Khanna has unique look, but I don’t see anything else about him that’s going to work well in memes.

11 Jon Ossoff
12 Josh Shapiro
13 Rahm Emmanuel

Just regular, serious white guys, I don’t see it for any of these.

I don't break even per month but I have inheritance to widdle down until I get in better place personally and can work more hours. I am really tired person physically and bad at doing chores as it hurts to walk with my issues so my strategy is lazy and time friendly. These may seem stating the obvios to some but I thought maybe for the doordashers it would be something to consider.

Since I started living by myself the easiest way to cook dinner for me is a piece of meat like pork, steak, or chicken on the frying pan. Then I cooked a side like boiling potatoes or the even faster strategy is to open a can of beans and microwave. (for rice lovers that is another option) For me this is the entire dinner, I'm eating it as soon as the meat and side is cooked. I'm not doing fancy shit like marinating or cutting up 5 types of vegetables. Steak and plain potatoes sounds pretty good to me as a dinner, I'm not complaining about that.

Second type of format is to boil pasta and then cook ground beef, sausage, meat balls, etc. and put it them together. This is also timely and is good for volume/leftovers. I don't even use pasta sauce though it wouldn't be a problem if I did.

Using that an different types of meats to avoid repetitiveness I can cook half my days in the week pretty easily and then have a few eating out or frozen pizza or something. Hamburger patties and buns is another frying pan driven idea that feels different. I knew how to make a laughably fast chili of ground beef, canned tomato and beans, chili spice packet and pouring boiling water on on it, but I liked it a bit less than the above, so I forget sometimes I have it as an option. Later on due to circumstances I had to eat more and I learned how to make bigger lasagna or shephards pie in oven, but also using minimalist layering strategy and ingredients.

This is not cooking channel or art but I am mainly looking for something that tastes good to me and feed me. Meat and a side like potatoes is not oatmeal grub. Taste wise it's a pretty good meal to me and the key is I can go from starting to eating in like 30 minutes, there is nothing to clean up but a frying pan and it's cheaper and takes less shopping, therefore it's not as much a chore to cook. I think I am decent at cooking meat the right amount since I use strategy to cut it open when it's close to see how cooked it is, or taste one strand of pasta out and test it.

Page was banned from world title, it could have been because they had a plan to make him B show #1 star with a different belt. He reappeared on Collision, but that may be because of Virginia location.

You can't have TBS title on Collision when Dynamite is the TBS one so they would have to either rename it or give Collision the better Womens title which I could see them being into anyway after pressure from social media about womens wrestling. Maybe they get Mercedes if she wins and they build it around her, with Willow still on her show and also the conglomeration as trios champions.

Fletcher is another wrestler who screams B show star candidate if they ever do a brand split following the temu Orton model. He could take midcard title there and in the future feud with Page as #1 face/heel, or lose international and then Collision's midcard ends up the national title.

Overall I think this would give them foundation for B show with Page, Fletcher, Mercedes/Willow, trios title, one of the midcard belts.